


Subtle Serpent

by Meltha



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/F, Not Canon Compliant, post-season 6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-08
Updated: 2012-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-29 05:13:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/316198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meltha/pseuds/Meltha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Willow’s recuperation in England doesn’t go according to plan when she begins to hear voices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Subtle Serpent

**Author's Note:**

  * For [latara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/latara/gifts).



> Disclaimer: All characters are owned by Mutant Enemy (Joss Whedon), a wonderfully creative company whose characters I have borrowed for a completely profit-free flight of fancy. Kindly do not sue me, please, as I am terrified of you. Thank you.
> 
> Author's Note: Written for 10yearsofbuffy from a request by latara who wanted an AU where Illyria’s shell is someone from the Buffy cast.

Willow had been recovering in England for two months, and she still couldn’t quite grasp what she had almost allowed herself to do. For years she had fought against people trying to destroy the world, but grief, anger, and too much power had pushed her over the line and into the opposing camp. The other witches, who were attempting to teach her self-control, and Giles, who she sometimes caught looking at her with a combination of sorrow and disgust, couldn’t possibly know what it had felt like to lose herself that much. She had thought she was starting to heal, but then the whispers started.

They began late at night, softly at first, and she had thought she was merely dreaming, but no matter how hard she tried to wake herself, they didn’t stop. To begin with there were no words, only a hum, almost a moan, nearly human but not quite. In the mornings it was always gone, and Willow chalked up the sounds to stress, guilt, and grief. But at night they returned, each time a little stronger. She said nothing to the others, worried that they might assume she had gone insane and never allow her to return home. In a dark corner of her mind, she wondered if they wouldn’t be right.

Finally, after more than a week of the noises, she became angry at herself for her fear. She carefully shrugged a robe on over her pajamas, scuffled into her slippers, and followed the sound. After all, she reasoned, it couldn’t harm her. She was still more powerful than anything else here, or possibly anywhere.

The noise grew louder as she descended the stairs towards the ground floor, and then again as she entered the basement. It was nearly filling her head now, and she knew that it was no ordinary sound. She realized she wasn’t hearing it with her ears but, in some way she couldn’t describe, it was still audible to her. A small part of her said this wasn’t a good idea, that there could be terrible consequences, but the rest of her was too curious.

At last, after stumbling through a maze of old books, crates, and antiquities, she came to a large box made of wood. Willow rested her hand on top of it, and the wood nearly hummed with power. She drew her fingers back instinctively as if she were afraid of being burned, but the sound had increased, and now it wasn’t simply a hum but words.

“Hail, wielder of power,” it said softly.

“Who are you?” she asked, though there was a barely discernible tremble in her voice.

“Another who wields power as great as yours or greater,” it replied, the words forming in her mind.

“I doubt that,” she said, feeling annoyed. “Have you tried to end the world lately?”

“Not in the memory of any of your species,” it said, “but there were worlds that bowed at my feet, worlds I snuffed out for the most minor of infractions against my will, worlds I extinguished merely because it pleased me to do so, and worlds I sculpted myself from the sludge of the primordial waste.”

It never occurred to Willow to doubt this. She knew somehow that whatever was inside that box was telling the truth, and it frightened her.

“Fear is not for the likes of us,” it said in her ear. “Fear is for those who would do us harm.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” Willow said evenly.

“No,” it said. “What you fear is yourself.”

Willow took a breath as though she were about to deny what it had told her, but stopped. She would be lying. It was right; what she feared was nothing outside of herself, nor was it the darkness she felt painting the corners of her soul. What she feared was her own desire to go beyond right and wrong, beyond guilt, and just let power wash over her, become her.

What she was looking at, though, was a coffin. This being that had been so powerful was now locked away and forgotten, trapped, anonymous. It could be her own grave she was gazing at, and it suddenly occurred to her that the Council might have exactly this end in mind for her if she didn’t toe the line perfectly.

“If you’re so powerful, how were you killed?” Willow asked.

“I was not,” the voice replied. “I am merely entombed and waiting. I have been waiting a long time, awaiting the day you would come.”

“Me?” Willow said cynically. “I kind of doubt that.”

“I have waited for one who was an equal to me, and you have now come. I have been silent for millenia, for there was no one to whom I would wish to speak. The lower beings dragged me from the place I was sent, but that was long ago, and now they have even forgotten what I am,” it said. “But now that has changed. You have come, and we will be one. I will show you the power you yearn for and the control to use it.”

“And what would you want in return?” Willow asked, frowning.

“The ability to see and stand and feel and taste again,” it replied. “I want my freedom, and I want a home.”

The words were tinged with the first hint of emotion, a dimly perceptible tint of sadness in the voice that echoed smoothly in her ear. Willow felt herself almost entranced.

“I could go to any living thing, choose any one of them to complete me, but none is worthy of me except you,” it said. “In the countless ages that I have slept, you are the only one powerful enough to be my match. All you need do is open the casket and we shall be as one. Then power shall be yours, greater than you have ever imagined, so great that the ocean waves will ripple at your command and the universe spin in a different dance as you wish.”

Willow did not move, though a thought grew in her mind.

“Yes,” it whispered, “you may even recall her from the dead and she shall live once more. Such is my power. Such will be yours.”

It was the greatest temptation that could be put in front of her, and a twisting sensation went through her gut at the thought of holding Tara in her arms once more.

“You must choose now. You are either to remain as you are or become more than you can possibly imagine. Open me, and all I say will be yours.”

There were a million reasons not to open the box, and in the moment before her hand rested on the lid, she thought she heard other voices in her ears, the voices of Eve, Pandora, Psyche, Bluebeard’s wife, and a chorus of others who had gone beyond knowledge they could bear. But Willow knew there was a difference between them and her: she knew that she could bear anything.

In a moment, the box was shattered, and the vapor that was once Illyria, god king of the Primordium, was released, whistling into her lungs and taking her to pieces inside, the pain more than she had ever imagined possible. She screamed in a whirlwind of agony, and then was silent.

As the pain cleared away, she opened her eyes . . . eyes as blue as ice.

“You see,” it said through her lips, “I do not lie. We are one, and that one is I.”

Whether Willow died that day or whether she became Illyria was irrelevant. By nightfall, the third orb that circled the sun was a cinder, though perhaps, just perhaps, a single soul had been plucked from it and taken to another realm where death would never touch them again.


End file.
